It’s Time To End This Thing!

It’s time for Democrats to go into a room, shut the doors, lock out those who aren’t interested in serving the American people, and pass health care reform! Republicans have had months to participate and get on board, and have declined to take a meaningful roll, so there’s really no point in negotiating any longer. When leading Republicans go on the stump talking about “breaking the President,” and blatantly repeating known falsehoods about legislative proposals, it’s time for the adults to do what adults do when the children are out of control – stop catering to them and take matters into their own hands.

Democrats have the votes, at least on paper, to pass a bill that the President will sign into law. It’s just a matter of convincing recalcitrant “Conservadems” that their interests, and those of their constituents, are better served with a good bill, with a strong public option, then with no bill at all. The loud voices at town hall meetings this summer were not those of the American people, they were those of the health care insurers who are opposed to any change that could possibly effect their bottom lines, and are willing to go to any lengths to preserve the unacceptable status quo.

Republican lawmakers have demonstrated over and over that they just don’t give a hoot about the Americans they claim to represent. This is all a political game to them, an attempt to recover from the horrible drubbing last year that left them a regional, minority party. They have decided that they need two things to happen for them to have a chance of picking up some seats in the next election. The first is that the recovery must fail, and unemployment must remain high. The second is that health care reform must be defeated.

They fought the stimulus tooth-and-nail, not over size of government or deficit concerns as they said, after all they had no such qualms during the last eight years, but because they needed this President to fail in order to have any chance of rebirth. They are fighting health care reform for the same reasons, with the additional incentive of the millions in contributions they are receiving from the insurance industry.

Face it, the Republicans are irrelevant right now, and it’s time for the Democrats to grow a spine and learn how to govern, for a change. It’s time for them to do what we elected them to do!

"The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. ...The plain lesson is that study and learning – not just of science, but of anything – are avoidable and even undesirable.”